COMPASS OF CRIME – NORTHSIDE
If there is one band whose I Hate Music entry is self explanatory, self-reflexive and damnit just one word it is Northside. Northsides one word to describe them would be “Northside” a term of abuse so prevalent in the music world that it has been rushed into the next edition of Jonathon Green’s slang dictionary. Examples of use are as follows:
“The main band were great but the support act were a bit Northside.”
“Looks like Christina Aguelleira’s hair is a right Northside.”
“Looks like Osama Bin laden’s made a bit of a Northside of the Twin Towers.”
Indeed so synonymous with the words “fucking disaster” are Northside that in the mid-nineties the government considered locking them up in a ICBM silo as our main form of non-nuclear deterence. Frankly it barely seemed worth me doing them on I Hate Music at all. That is until I got this letter:
“Please make fun of Northside!! My husband is always going on and on about how Tony Wilson and Factory Records are gifts from the gods, etc. Makes me wanna wretch!!” We can forgive her mispelling retch, for she has been made such a wretch by her obviously unbalanced husband. If he truly believes that Tony Wilson and Factory Records were a gift from the gods then I suggest checking under the hearth rug for pentagrams – for he is obviously in the thrall of the Dark One himself – Satan. To then single out Northside as the finest thing from Factories godawful back-catalogue suggests we have a man who has listened to too many Stockholm Monsters tracks (and believe me – one is too many).
Anyone who has seen 24 Hour Party People – the modern day equivalent of making Mein Kampf The Movie in my book – will know that the Factory Records story is one of incompetance, drug addled nonsense and fucking terrible music. So bad that A Certain Ratio get a look in, but not so bad that Northside get a mention. Contemporaries of the Happy Mondays, Northside made Shaun Ryder look like a pop god. Their bandwagon jumping skills were in full effect when they saw the baggy explosion, but unfortunately they were rubbish and jumping on bandwagons as they appear to have knocked the band off somewhere. Not for them the subtleties of drugs references in songs – nope it was Sing LSD all the way to – well number 52 in the charts. Their only hit was Take Five, itself a reference to the number of mogadon tablets you would have to take to survive their music.
So I say to you Sharon Wheeler, ditch the man. There isn’t a court in the world which would not take the playing of Northside records as cruel and unusual punishment and give you custody of all of his worldly goods while slapping him in leg irons and shipping him off to the Indies. I would happily represent you in court – for the mere payment of his record collection. To destroy you understand – I love the smell of vynl in the morning.